


speak, don't confide

by illemuise



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, anxiety disorders, because i'm a weenie! maybe someday i'll post real porn., but then oops! feelings, gets pretty hot n heavy with making out and heavy petting but no actual smut, i gave them both anxiety disorders bc oops! i have one and i can't Not, leon getting over valbar, or really a lack of communication? kamui refusing to communicate?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 11:36:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12911106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illemuise/pseuds/illemuise
Summary: Leon and Kamui have a perfectly satisfactory friends-with-benefits arrangement, until they don't. Leon might not be handling it well.





	speak, don't confide

**Author's Note:**

> come yell with me on tumblr @snaps-wexley i love rare pairs
> 
> song title from "yet again" by grizzly bear

The whole thing started as a distraction. War’s a stressful thing, after all, and so is pining desperately after a man who’ll never love you. Leon had been wound so tight for so long that the second Kamui made an actual pass at him, one he didn’t immediately back away from, he’d been more than happy to take him up on the offer. And though he hadn’t expected Kamui to be bad in bed, he’d been surprised by how gentle he was, and how...communicative. Leon had expected Kamui to take what he wanted, maybe let Leon take what he wanted from time to time, and that would be that. A transaction, nothing more. An outlet.

Kamui first surprised him when he didn’t assume anything was on the table. Leon had had plenty of this sort of arrangement in the army, and though he had never been shy about refusing anything he wasn’t comfortable with, he’d never talked much about it. But the first time they slept together, Kamui kissed him slow and then, the heel of his hand pressing firmly against Leon’s dick through his pants and mouth hot against his ear, asked him what he wanted and how he wanted it. Leon hadn’t expected such a simple question to be so sexy, but it had prodded at something deeper in him, the desperate yearning he didn’t like to admit for someone to love him back, to _care_ about what he wanted and to put those wants first. It drove him a little wild.

In the beginning, Leon followed his old pattern. Quick, methodical, and most importantly, once it was done, it was over. He’d never been one to spend the night with a casual fuck, partially because they rarely invited him and partially because he was wary about developing unwanted feelings in a practical situation. Not that that had helped any, as he just ended up following Valbar around like a lovesick puppy and he didn’t even get to take Valbar to bed, but the thought was there. And he was perfectly fine being in love with someone like Valbar; he’d rather love someone who cared about him but never fucked him than the opposite. Valbar may be oblivious, but he was sweet, and treated Leon like he was worth something.

But when a rockslide buried some of their supplies, including a few tents, and forced a reshuffle that, to Leon’s consternation, stuck him sharing a tent with Kamui, it started feeling pointless to leave immediately after they were done. He was only ever retreating to the other side of the tent, and Rigelian nights were freezing. So one evening, pitching the tent, Leon slung his bedroll much closer to Kamui’s. Not quite together, giving Kamui a chance to edge away if he wanted to, but close enough to send a message. He hoped, anyway. He wouldn’t put it past the big oaf to not notice. And even if he did, there might have to be a conversation. Leon never considered, in all his yearning for someone to care about his feelings, that then he might have to talk about them, but Kamui seemed like a big fan of the whole talking thing. “To keep them on the same page,” he claimed.

Kamui, though, had noticed immediately. He stared at the bedrolls for a moment, then at Leon, unlacing his boots like nothing had changed, opened his mouth, shut it, shrugged, and flopped on his own bedroll to pull his shirt off. Occasionally he wasn’t _too_ insufferable. Leon supposed that was part of why he’d been willing to fuck him in the first place.

So they’d ended up sleeping together in the literal sense. Just, you know, for practicality’s sake. And if Leon had started allowing Kamui to curl closer to him than before, gotten a little more comfortable relying on him outside of a fight, maybe kissed him a little without it actually going anywhere, well, that was just how it worked when the guy you were fucking was also your roommate, he guessed.

Which led him to now. He and Kamui were supposed to be on watch, but they were in the middle of nowhere, and Boey and Mae had set up enough wards that a bad-tempered squirrel would wake every mage in the camp, and so Leon had allowed Kamui to back him up against a tree, hands firm on his waist and mouth insistent.

Irresponsible? Maybe. So was the way Kamui was sucking marks into the side of Leon’s neck. If pressed, Leon would blame it on the way Kamui had shoved one muscular thigh between his and ground up, using his height to wedge Leon high enough against the tree that he had to stand on the balls of his feet, centering his weight squarely on where Kamui ground deliciously against him. Leon just clung to Kamui’s shoulders and let his head roll with a breathy sigh as Kamui dragged his hands down Leon’s sides to his hips.

Leon felt Kamui smirk against throat. “Remember when you said I wasn’t your type?” he murmured against one of the darkening bruises he’d left just high enough to peek out of the top of Leon’s collar. Face burning, Leon smacked Kamui’s shoulder, about to tell him to knock it off before he rocked forward again, thigh dragging against Leon heavy enough to scatter his thoughts again. Gasping, Leon dropped his face to Kamui’s shoulder with a choked-off groan. “Are you _sure_ about that?” Kamui’s voice was smug, and something curled in Leon’s chest.

“You’re _not,”_ he huffed into Kamui’s shoulder, trying to hide the way he was panting. “We’re just blowing off steam, remember?”

Kamui stilled, fingers twitching on Leon’s hips like he wasn’t sure whether to hold him tighter or let go entirely. Leon wasn’t sure which one he wanted, either. He pulled his head back to look Kamui in the eye, and found a look he didn’t like at all: the look Kamui gave Celica when she started asking too many personal questions, all fake ease with a tightness around the eyes Leon hadn’t seen in weeks. “What?”

“Nothing,” Kamui scoffed. “Just trying to give you some crap. Relax.” Leon wanted to argue but Kamui pressed forward again, ducking his head back to Leon’s shoulder and bringing one hand to drag across his crotch again. Gasping, Leon let his head fall back against the tree again. He tried to follow along with the rhythm Kamui was clearly trying to set, but something was wrong. Kamui’s shoulders were tense under Leon’s hands, and though his breath puffed hotly against Leon’s neck he did not continue the kisses and bites he’d been leaving before.

“Kamui.” Leon pushed at his shoulder, but Kamui didn’t seem to notice. _“Kamui, wait.”_ At this, Kamui glanced up at him, and, seeing the furrow in Leon’s brow, dropped his hands and stepped back out of his personal space. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kamui wasn’t so obvious as to avoid Leon’s gaze, but his hands were twitching like he didn’t know what to do with them and his shoulders were still too tense. 

Leon crossed his arms, cross with Kamui’s sudden avoidance. “You’re a really obvious liar. I’d like some honesty, please.” He was still warm under the collar, embarrassed from Kamui’s teasing and annoyed that he was suddenly acting so strangely. “Or do we only talk about things when _you_ want to?”

“Relax, alright?” Kamui held his hands up in an attempt at appeasement. “If you must know, I’m just a little miffed that you apparently still refuse to acknowledge that you’re wildly attracted to me, even though we’ve been sleeping together for over a month. Nothing more.”

“And that’s it?” Leon asked, eyeing him suspiciously. It didn’t feel like the full truth, but Kamui hadn’t lied to him before, and it wasn’t like Leon had any right to dig further.

“That’s it.” Kamui sighed, hands on his hips. “Are you happy now?”

Leon sniffed. “Stop treating me like a nagging wife. You can’t just keep going when something’s wrong. It’s all off like that.”

“Sure.” Kamui sounded resigned. “Well. Not for nothing, but I don’t really feel like the mood’s there anymore, yeah? I’m gonna do a lap around camp, make sure everything’s alright. You might wanna pull that leaf outta your hair.”

Sputtering indignantly, Leon combed his fingers through the hair on the back of his head, pulling the dead leaf out from where it clung near his scalp as Kamui turned on his heel and disappeared into the disorganized scramble of tents. He did feel a little better, to have wrangled an admission of an emotion out of Kamui. It wasn’t until later, when Saber arrived to relieve him of watch and he returned to a still-empty tent, that Leon had to admit to the little niggling feeling that something was more off than he thought.

 

Kamui wasn’t avoiding Leon, per se. It would be difficult to do that, considering they did still have to share a tent. But something in their relationship had cooled significantly. It wasn’t like they were fucking every night before, but now, stuck in the desert with a shitty choice between a band of mercenaries Kamui and Saber had mentioned steering clear of before and a woman with a small army of witches at her disposal, Leon found himself wound just as tight as he had been before. And while Kamui was _around,_ he seemed to be taking care not to be caught _alone_ with Leon. He swapped shifts with Saber for watch (not that Leon was keen on fooling around in desert sand), meaning by the time Leon got back to the tent he was gone, and by the time Kamui got back Leon was asleep already. And their bedrolls were firmly separate again, after Kamui had rather unsubtly moved his during the day.

Leon could take a hint. Their arrangement was clearly over because of Kamui’s absurd ego, and with no other options, Leon was left to his mounting tension.

Celica had apparently decided to march north, to fight Deen. Saber had explained to her about six times within Leon’s hearing alone that Deen’s men were a serious threat, but she insisted on keeping their fights with witches to a minimum. “Even if they couldn’t teleport behind our front lines, divide us, and pick us off as they pleased,” she’d said seriously, arms crossed and mouth pursed, “it’s not like they’ve chosen to fight us. I’d prefer not to kill them.”

“It’s not as simple as all that, lass,” Saber had retorted. “Not everyone gets to choose what they are. For a lot of those mercs, it’s fight us or die, too. At least a witch goes down with just one or two solid hits.”

“Before or after they kill all of us before we can even get close? My mind’s made up, Saber. We march north.” And that had been that.

Despite knowing that they wouldn’t be facing the empty-eyed, teleporting powerhouses that posed such a distressing threat to Valbar, Leon found himself tossing and turning in the night. What if the woman who commanded them - Sonya? - thought to join Deen and they ended up fighting both armies at once? What if just one or two witches had been sent with Deen, and one teleported behind them, and went for Valbar? Leon couldn’t handle losing him. He couldn’t go through that kind of loss again. It had nearly killed him the first time.

Still Kamui evaded him. Leon tried to vent by training, shooting sunup to sundown, arrows clustered neatly around the center of the target, until his shoulders shook with the effort of drawing his bow and his fingers were raw and and aching from the constant press of the bowstring. When that didn’t work, he retreated to the kitchens with Mae, kneading bread dough with swollen knuckles and burning batch after batch of cookies.

“Leon? Hey - _Leon!”_ He startled as Mae snapped her fingers in his face, frowning. “I think the dough’s mixed, buddy.”

“Oh. Um.” Leon withdrew his hands from the bowl, feeling foolish and not sure what to do with the feeling. “Sorry. Spaced out a little.”

“I can tell.” Mae took the bowl from him and covered it with a damp cloth to let it rise. “Look, are you sure you’re okay? You’re usually all gossipy when we’re in here.”

Leon sighed. “I’m fine. Just a little tense.” Mae did not at all look like she bought it. He cringed inwardly, hoping to Mila that she would let this go, because he really didn’t fancy having a chat with a teenage girl about his sex life and resulting interpersonal issues. 

“You know you can talk to me, right? I mean, I know I’m like, a kid to you, but we’re friends by now. I mean, we’re always in here baking. I feel like I could talk to you, so….” Mae shifted her weight, seeming a little unsure. “Like I said. I know you’re older or whatever. But I’ve never seen you screw up one of your love cookies before, you know?”

Leon paused. His immediate impulse was to brush her off, but she seemed so genuine. “I...well. Really, Mae, it’s not that big a deal. I just had an argument with Kamui, and it’s been weighing on me.” Not the entire truth, but not a lie either. He had to hope it would satisfy her.

“With Kamui?” Mae looked surprised. “I would have expected, well, Valbar, frankly. You’ve argued with Kamui plenty, and it didn’t bother you this much.”

“I would never argue with Valbar. There’s nothing to argue about. He’s perfect,” Leon scoffed.

Mae raised an eyebrow. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Am not. Now come on, this time I won’t burn the cookies.”

“You had better not! We don’t have unlimited ingredients, you know!”

 

“So,” Valbar said conversationally the next morning, sidling closer to where Leon stood with an arrow nocked and the bowstring rough against his aching fingers.

“So,” Leon offered, taking aim and drawing. Despite the pain of his overworked muscles, the way his left hand ached where he clutched the riser of the bow too tightly, it was comforting to shoot. He could feel his shoulder blades pull together, felt his focus narrow as he stared down the length of the arrow, aiming slightly lower than the center of the target because he knew his own habit of rising ever-so-slightly when he released the arrow. It was a kind of meditation, feeling his body working like this, his knuckles brushing the curve of his jaw the way Kamui’s had just last week.

Nope. Not thinking about that. Leon quashed the thought and Valbar, respectfully, waited for him to let the arrow fly before he continued. He held his posture until he heard the _thunk_ of the arrow hitting the bullseye, then took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and turned to face his oldest friend.

Valbar was visibly concerned. Leon had a sneaking suspicion Mae had talked to him after she had to save the last batch of cookies from the same fate as all the others because Leon had spaced out again. Even besides that, he’d barely slept in three days, and he knew it would show. 

“Nice shot,” Valbar congratulated, smiling sunnily at the way Leon’s round of six arrows were clustered neatly on the bullseye. Leon flushed and ducked his head. Whatever ridiculous conversation he was about to get dragged into, Valbar’s attention was never wholly unwelcome - nor the way he praised him, clapping Leon’s shoulder almost hard enough to send him sprawling. Valbar was, to Leon’s eternal consternation, a tactile man, prone to casual touches like the way he was just leaving his hand on Leon’s shoulder now, squeezing in a way that was probably meant to be soothing but just made Leon want to combust on the spot. “You’ve always been such a good shot. It’s really something.”

Leon mumbled something he hoped sounded demure rather than incoherent. Even after all this time, Valbar’s undivided attention was almost overwhelming in its intensity. His compliments even more so.

“Still, though,” and here came the part of the conversation Leon really super didn’t want to have, “you’ve been training a lot more than usual. Let me see your hand.” Feeling a bit trapped but without the slightest idea of how to finesse his way out of the situation, Leon let Valbar grab his string hand and turn it over, hissing at the redness of the skin and the way his fingers refused to fully straighten out on their own. “Leon. This isn’t healthy. You know better than to overtrain like this - your bow is heavy, you could get serious nerve damage in your hand. What’s going on?”

Shuffling his feet, Leon avoided Valbar’s probing gaze. If having this conversation with Mae was unpleasant, having it with Valbar was worse than dying. How do you explain to the man you’ve been hopelessly in love with for years that your casual hookup was ignoring you and it was stressing you out?

After a pause that felt like an eternity, Valbar continued. “That girl you gossip with in the kitchens, Mae? She said you had a fight with Kamui. Is that what this is about? It doesn’t sound like you.”

He loathed to admit it, but Leon was chafing a little under Valbar’s questions, even as he pressed his thumbs into the meat of Leon’s palm in a futile attempt to ease the overworked muscles. He wanted to savor the feeling, lock it away with the rest of his little catalogue of Valbar’s touches, but the tight, riled-up feeling in his chest still hadn’t gone away and he felt too cornered to really appreciate the gesture.

Valbar was frowning now as Leon’s silence continued to stretch on. “This...really isn’t like you, old friend. What can I do to help you?” 

“I don’t think I know how to answer you,” Leon said softly. Here he was, standing with Valbar _holding his hand,_ and he was still zoning out. He had no idea what was wrong. He felt off-kilter, like something in him had been knocked off-balance and spent the past several days wavering on the edge of falling, unable to right itself but still fighting the drop. Kamui always knew how to deal with anxiety like this, had told Leon once in the quiet that when his family first arrived in the city Kamui had spent days slinking from corner to corner, feeling trapped with too many walls and stars blocked by torchlight when he did manage to sneak to the roof in the night. He’d had to learn to deal with that wild, choked feeling, he’d said. He’d gotten good at it, and he’d taught Leon a little, but nothing could touch whatever was loose in Leon now.

Finally, Valbar dropped Leon’s hand and clapped his shoulder again. “Please try to get some rest, at least. You’re exhausted, and we’re likely to face Deen tomorrow.”

“I’ll try,” Leon said, almost too softly for Valbar to hear, still staring at his feet as his old friend retreated.

 

He did manage to sleep that night, more likely because of the sleeping draught Genny had given him after dinner than because of any reprieve from his anxiety. The longer the silence dragged on between Leon and Kamui, the worse he felt. He was aware that he must have done something wrong, but he had no idea what it could be. Everything had stopped so suddenly, and Kamui’s absence was forcing Leon to admit that he was missing a good friend, not just a good lay. Valbar was a good friend, but he hadn’t had to deal with the moods Leon got into sometimes, the wild energy or the long periods where he was too tired to even sleep. He could offer his support, but his solutions were wildly out of touch with what Leon needed. 

Kamui had always gotten it, though. Even before they really got to know each other, when they were barely on speaking terms, Kamui had found Leon in a panic, organizing and reorganizing their food stores in the middle of the night shortly before they set sail for Barth’s island. Leon had laughed too high, tried to find an excuse, but Kamui had simply sat with him and counted his breathing. It had helped, and though he’d braced the next day for a snide comment, Kamui never brought it up. He hated to compare Valbar to anyone unfavorably, but the reality was that Valbar wouldn’t have been able to help him. Words were all he’d have had, and they wouldn’t have been enough.

It was that night’s sleep that gave Leon the clarity of mind to wake up with a single thought: _fuck it._ Kamui’s avoidance was what was driving him crazy and denying him his peace of mind. He could live without sex, but if Kamui was going to insist on all those stupid conversations about desires then _Leon_ was going to insist on a conversation about what the hell was going on. Friends talked about things, right?

But of course they found Deen before Leon found Kamui. They spotted the northern fortress first, just a smear on the top of a dune on the horizon, but distance was hard to judge visually in a desert. According to Saber, it was closer than it looked, and the day’s march proved him right as the fortress seemed to rush forward to meet them. Leon couldn’t shake the heaviness in the pit of his stomach or the tightness in his chest, growing worse as they approached. At any moment Deen’s men would swarm from wherever they were hiding. He wished Deen would get it over with.

They stopped at the foot of the dune on which the fortress sat. It all felt eerily quiet. Leon had been told that skilled mercenaries could hide anywhere, lay still and silent until their target got too close, like a spider in the corner of its web. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that none of Deen’s men could teleport, and hoped Celica made the right decision.

“Deen?” Celica called across the sand. Leon winced at the way her voice echoed off the walls. 

The response came from their left, a myrmidon materializing from the shadows under rubble and lunging for Catria. At her startled kick, Catria’s pegasus launched itself clumsily into the air, sending up a spray of sand from its churning hooves and the way its wings frantically beat the earth in its effort to get out of the way.

As if a signal had gone off, they were suddenly engulfed, mercenaries erupting from the fortress as well as from any spare shadow in the sand. The whitewings hurled themselves into the air, kicking up enough sand to temporarily blind Leon. Coughing, he shook the sand out of his face, and by the time he cleared his eyes Valbar was farther ahead than he expected.

Leon took off after Valbar, an arrow already nocked. He needed to stick close; if he strayed too far, the swirling sand around him would grow too thick to tell friend from foe. Best case, he’d miss every shot. He didn’t want to think about the worst case.

Valbar, of course, was used to Leon staying no more than a few steps away. With his heavy armor, the mercenary who had already fallen on him could do little damage, and Leon could edge slightly to the right, where Valbar had created an opening for Leon to slip an arrow just below the end of the leather armor strapped across the mercenary’s chest. As soon as the one merc was down there was another, and another, Leon following Valbar in his inexorable march forward, to Deen.

But the problem with this pattern, a style that Valbar and Leon had fallen into after years of fighting together, was that it required some outside help to work. Namely, while Leon watched Valbar’s back with a laser focus, someone else had to be watching his. And in the limited visibility brought on by fighting in the sand, the harsh sun reflecting off the sand and the ruins and even Valbar’s armor straight into their eyes, and the level of _noise_ that came with fighting, nobody could. So when a myrmidon looped around Valbar, using the sand and the riot of noise to slip unnoticed past Saber and even Mae, Leon didn’t notice his approach.

_“Leon!”_ He reacted quickly to the yell, Kamui’s voice, coming from somewhere behind him, and dove to one side, avoiding death by barely an inch, the blade catching the hem of his tunic as he lost his footing and sprawled across the sand. Rolling, he struggled to rise, but in his blinding panic he couldn’t coordinate his limbs with the way the ground beneath him slid away with every movement. 

At the crunch of sand under a boot behind him, Leon rolled flat onto his back, catching the myrmidon’s sword with his bow. It dug halfway through the oiled wood, and Leon twisted it and yanked sideways, ripping the sword from the myrmidon’s grasp. The sword skittered away over the sand, but before Leon could rise the myrmidon drew a curved, wicked-looking knife from his belt, and all Leon could do was half-curl, hoping his arms could protect his chest and stomach.

With a cry, a blur of dark green and cream collided with the myrmidon, sending the both of them tumbling away across the sand. Finally able to roll to his front and scramble to his feet, Leon lunged for the myrmidon’s sword as Kamui wrestled him for the knife. By the time Leon snatched it up, almost dropping it again in his hurry and panic, the myrmidon had flipped them and pinned Kamui, spitting and struggling, against the sand.

With a lurch and no finesse, Leon shoved the sword through the myrmidon’s side, overbalancing and ending up sprawled across him on the ground. The myrmidon died quickly with the sword through his chest, and when the thrashing was over Leon straightened and whirled around. “Kamui?!”

He was groaning but not moving, and with a jolt Leon saw the knife embedded in the right side of Kamui’s chest, low and to the side. _No,_ he thought. _I can’t do this again, I can’t lose him, not like this._ In slow motion Leon saw Kamui raise his hand to the handle of the knife as if to pull it out, and before he knew it Leon was on him, slapping his hand away and pinning his shoulders back to the sand. “Kamui! Don’t pull it out, idiot!”

“L-Leon?” Kamui panted. He looked dazed. “Are you okay?”

Leon shook his head, trying desperately to control his breathing. He felt like he was about to be sick - his stomach felt liquid with panic and he couldn’t feel his legs, but there - out of the corner of his eye - a flash -

Snarling, he whipped to his feet, Kamui’s sword in hand, and slashed across the front of the merc who had tried to sneak up on him. He whirled around, still couldn’t feel his legs, noted with faint detachment that he couldn’t feel anything at all. The noise of the battle was quieting, or he couldn’t hear it over the roaring in his ears. There, to his left, another shadow emerging from the calming sands. Leon lunged toward it, feet scrabbling in the sand because he hadn’t centered his weight, leading with the point of Kamui’s blade.

Saber parried easily and Leon overbalanced, dropping the sword and struggling to catch his feet again. “Saber?!”

“Leon. Relax,” Saber grabbed his shoulders as, out of his periphery, Leon saw Genny fly past him in a dead sprint for Kamui. “It’s over.”

“Kamui-” Leon made to turn, but Saber’s grip on his shoulders tightened to hold him in place. “Let me go!”

“You’ll just get in the way. Let the girl do her work.” Saber was looking at him like a cornered animal.

Leon twisted in his grip, almost thrashing in his desperation. “He’s _hurt!”_

“Valbar. Handle him!” Before Leon could react, Saber all but threw him against the solid wall of Valbar’s armor and took off to help Genny. Valbar wouldn’t let him go, either, grabbing both of Leon’s forearms to keep him in place.

“Let go of me, Valbar, I swear to all the gods-”

“Leon, calm _down.”_

“How can you possibly expect me to be _calm?!”_ Leon spat, finally stilling to glare at Valbar with as much venom as he can muster. “Valbar, I can’t _do_ this again! _Let go of me!”_

Something in Valbar’s face softened with understanding. Leon’s mind spun, unaware of anything outside of the fact that Kamui was hurt, and when Valbar’s hands loosened slightly as he thought over what Leon had said, Leon ripped from his grasp and got about four steps closer to where Kamui lay in the dirt before he felt a shudder of magic through his head and the world went dark.

 

Leon woke with a groan on a shitty, hay-filled mattress on the floor in the suffocating heat of the med tent. Boey was sitting next to him him, arms crossed and dirty hair plastered flat across his forehead with sweat. When he saw Leon was awake, he scowled. “Are you going to calm down now?”

“Where’s Kamui?” Leon shot up, then groaned as the tent spun around him. “What’s going on?”

Boey sighed. “You were beside yourself. You’d have gotten between Genny and Kamui, so I knocked you out. He’s okay now, just resting. You were hurt, too, you know.”

“Where _is_ he?” Leon demanded. “I need to see him.”

Boey rolled his eyes, and Leon was vividly reminded of the fact that the kid was sixteen and didn’t know jack about shit. “Never mind. I assume he’s here. You wouldn’t have woken me up if I couldn’t see him.”

“Hey, I never said-” Boey started indignantly, but Leon was already up, ignoring his vertigo, pushing past Boey impatiently. Some of the other cots were occupied - Jesse, nursing a bandaged arm, and Saber, still being treated by a worried Celica for a nasty bruise across the side of his face - but Leon spotted Kamui at the other end of the tent, still lying down, and marched over, trying to seem as collected as he could.

Kamui was asleep, head turned away from Leon. Leon’s stomach lurched at how pale he looked and the sea of bandages across his chest but took refuge in his slow, even breaths. He sat with a huff and reached for Kamui’s hand. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until this moment.

He’d thought he’d lost him. Leon remembered with a haunting clarity the moment he’d seen the knife, the thought in his head that he’d spat at Valbar: that he couldn’t do it again. Lose another man he cared for in the middle of a battle, because he’d been careless. Last time it hadn’t been directly because of Leon, though he’d blamed himself for not seeing the enemy in time, not covering the back of the boy he’d followed into war. This time it would have been, because Kamui only got stabbed because he’d been protecting Leon.

Leon sighed. How’d he gotten into this situation? He’d been careful, back in the army, not to let himself grow any feelings for any of the men he’d slept with. And he had Valbar, here. But, Leon supposed, even he couldn’t carry a hopeless torch forever. Valbar was dear, the best friend Leon had ever had, but he would never love him. Not the way he wanted. He’d known that for a long time. Perhaps his heart had finally, finally tired of its aching. And Kamui was dear, too. He understood the parts of Leon nobody else ever had before. He was considerate, and kind, and though he didn’t like to talk about his past he was always willing to listen when Leon did. Sometimes he even offered up something of himself in return.

He still didn’t know what he’d done to fuck things up between them, but Leon knew he’d have to swallow his pride and ask. If there was nothing more between them, he could handle it; he’d been handling unrequited love for so much of his life, it would be almost comforting in its familiarity. But he wanted his friendship back, if nothing else. Surely he could have that, if Kamui had almost thrown his life away to save Leon.

As Leon sat, lost in thought, Kamui grunted and began to stir. He opened his eyes after a long moment, looking first at the tent wall, then his hand where Leon clasped it in his, then up to Leon’s face. “Leon,” he said, and his voice was raspy but it was the best thing Leon had ever heard.

“Kamui,” he said softly. “You’re okay.”

Kamui relaxed a little. “So are you. I’m glad.”

“Why did you do that?” Leon meant for it to sound a little more demanding, a little more confident, but it came out too soft and vulnerable.

“You were about to get stabbed?” Kamui looked confused. “I didn’t _want_ you to get stabbed?”

Leon huffed a laugh. “I didn’t want you to get stabbed, either, you idiot.”

“Well, how about next time neither of us gets stabbed.” Kamui was looking at him with a crooked little grin that made Leon’s heart flutter. He hadn’t seen it in so long, not since before Kamui had started avoiding him.

“It’s a deal.” Leon smiled back, but he felt it slide off his face before long. Kamui’s followed it. “I didn’t think you...would have done that for me. I was so scared. Why have you been avoiding me?” The vulnerability was back in his voice again. He sounded how he felt: small, and abandoned, and scared.

Kamui didn’t answer for a long moment, but when Leon sighed and went to release his hand, Kamui tightened his grip. “I was, well. I was hurt when you said I wasn’t your type.”

“But we were...I thought we were playing,” Leon protested, frowning at where Kamui was clinging to his hand now. “If that was all, why did you stop talking to me altogether?”

“It reminded me that what we had was...just an arrangement.” Kamui wasn’t looking at Leon, but staring up at the tent. “Blowing off steam, like you said. And…”

“And?” Leon breathed.

“And I didn’t want it to be...just that,” Kamui confessed in a sigh. “I let myself start thinking maybe it could be more, and the reminder that it wasn’t hurt so much, so I thought it would be better if I got some space. I heard from Valbar this morning that you were really hurting - I never meant to hurt you. I was gonna talk to you after the fight today, and then I saw that myrmidon sneaking up on you…”

Leon was silent for a moment. “And you never thought to ask me what I thought about being more?”

“What?” Kamui frowned. “You were clear from the start - you’ve loved Valbar for years. I didn’t realize our friendship was so important to you, but I know I could never compare to him in your eyes. It wasn’t worth hearing that all over again.”

“Things change. Did I ever tell you how I fell for Valbar in the first place?” At Kamui’s silence, Leon continued. “I followed a boy into the army. I know, I know, me and my unrequited loves. But he...he died, in battle, because I wasn’t watching his back.”

“I’m sorry,” Kamui said.

“I’m not done. After he died, I completely lost myself. All I could do was lay around and be miserable. And Valbar was the one who came to me in all that sadness, and helped me through it. I survived that loss because of him, I think. So I followed him when he lost his family, and I made his cause my own, because I loved him for being so good to me when I never did anything to deserve it.” Leon took a shaky breath. “But he’ll never love me back, I’ve always known that. He had a family, and then...then he didn’t. But his heart never wavered from them in the slightest. And I’m so tired of hurting.” He was clutching Kamui’s hand now. “Do you know what I thought when I saw you in all that dust with a knife in you because you were looking out for me?”

“No,” Kamui whispered. Leon could feel his eyes on him, but he couldn’t look at his face.

Leon struggled to speak around the feeling that his throat had closed. “I thought, not again. I can’t go through this again.”

Silence, stretching longer than Leon knew what to do with.

Finally, he glanced a look at Kamui’s face, slack with shock, eyes locked to his with a focus that, if it were anyone else, would have made him squirm and want to bolt. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” Kamui said, and tugged him closer with their joined hands. Leon went, kneeling with his knees on the edge of Kamui’s cot. Kamui brought their hands to his mouth and brushed his lips across Leon’s knuckles. Leon could hear the blood in his ears again as Kamui kissed the inside of his wrist, wondered if Kamui could feel the thunderous gallop of his heart in the vein there. “I think I’ve been very stupid.”

“Please don’t do this to me again,” Leon begged, and there was that hitch in his chest again. He could feel tears on his eyelashes and he knew Kamui saw them because he lifted his free hand and brushed his thumb across the skin under Leon’s eye. It was the gentlest, most tender touch Leon had ever felt, and he chased it, pressing Kamui’s palm to his mouth with his free hand and closing his eyes to savor the feeling of Kamui’s calloused palm against his face.

“I didn’t realize I hurt you that much,” Kamui murmured. “You look exhausted. Valbar told me a bit, about how hard you’d been pushing yourself. He was furious - as he should have been. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Leon replied. “I should have been honest with you, or made you talk to me that night. I knew something was wrong.”

Kamui shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We got here in the end. We’re okay.”

“I hope you don’t think you’re getting rid of me after this.” Leon fixed Kamui with the steadiest look he could manage, wobbly as he still felt. “And don’t you _dare_ put me through any of this ever again. I’ll resurrect you just to kick your ass.”

“There’s the Leon I know,” Kamui said with a smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I missed you too much.”

Leon let Kamui pull him down to settle with him on the mattress and curled as close as he dared to the uninjured side of Kamui’s chest. “I missed you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> originally i wanted the leadup to this fic and the scene with kamui and leon hooking up against the tree to be kamui pov but it wouldn't make sense to suddenly switch to leon pov for the rest of the fic so here we are. this also turned out both way longer and less smutty than planned. wouldn't you know!
> 
> i also wanted to put sonya in this, because i love sonya and i think she and leon would get along famously, but i timed the fic wrong for that, and i don't think she'd have the patience to watch leon slowly freak out over the course of days. leon's other friends are great, but i don't think they'd know how to help him with this. sonya's the type to drag kamui and leon into the same room by the ear and sit them down and say Neither Of You Are Leaving Until This Gets Worked Out. maybe at some point i'll write a fic that's just leon and sonya, and how together they are a menace the likes of which celica's army has never seen. sonya corners kamui and gives him a retroactive shovel talk. that kind of thing.
> 
> speaking of shovel talks, valbar def gave kamui one.


End file.
